Hard-Boiled

V .I. Warshawski is famous for her cool under fire, her intelligence, her humor, her unflinching courage, and her love of good coffee. But even the strongest people sometimes need a break to recharge, so her friends send her to Kansas for a weekend of college basketball where Angela, one of her protégées, is playing. And that’s where trouble finds V.I.

A French diplomat is walking alone down a darkened Paris side street when a killer emerges from the shadows. He stuns the Frenchman, cuts his body into quarters, and leaves a note that reads: "This is for Brazil!" It is the ninth murder in this fashion in the last two months—a string of round-the-world killings that strikes fear into the hearts of all those connected with the bloody Brazilian wars of the past decade.

It’s August 1962 and Brighton Evening Chronicle crime reporter Colin Crampton needs a front-page story. Then Colin gets a tip-off that Arnold Trumper, who owns the seafront’s miniature golf course, has disappeared. And that Trumper’s vanishing act is linked to an unsolved murder. Powerful people don’t want Colin to find the truth. He uses every newspaper scam he knows to get his scoop. Trouble is Colin’s girlfriend, feisty Australian Shirley Goldsmith, carries the can when a scam misfires. Can Colin win a race against time to land his story—and keep Shirley on-side?

Detective Sebastian Clifford and his partner Lucinda "Birdie" Bird are about to embark on their most challenging case yet when Lady Angelica Charing tasks them with finding the son she secretly gave away when she was only sixteen. Time's running out. This long-lost son isn't just a missing puzzle piece; he's the last hope for a life-saving kidney transplant for his dying half-brother. The stakes couldn't be higher.

Earl Marcus has faced a litany of demons in his time, but a grisly murder sends him spiraling into a vortex of long-buried secrets. After losing a hotly contested sheriff's race to the lackey of corrupt politician Jeb Walsh, Earl Marcus has had the worst summer of his life. But worst turns deadly when a body turns up on Earl's front lawn, accompanied by a cryptic letter.

I stopped to get my shoes shined and disaster followed. The guy getting his shoes shined next to me is an ex-con, a street rat, and overall despicable human being. Yet he had plans for the perfect heist. Mastermind? Hardly. But the idea was sound. A bank is scheduled to be demolished. Inside is a long-forgotten secret—a lucrative secret. Empty bank, no guards, no alarms. What can go wrong?

Magazine editor and part-time archaeologist, Gill McArdle is getting it together. Or at least, he thinks he is, until the death of a friend throws his life into turmoil. He’s on Orkney, researching an elaborate stone carrying an ancient religious motif. But he’s perplexed as the carving long predates any previous incidence of the symbol’s first use. Either someone is tampering with Orcadian archaeology, or Gill is facing a puzzle that can’t be resolved.

San Francisco, September 1921: Silent-screen comedy star Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle is throwing a wild party in his suite at the St. Francis Hotel-girls, jazz, bootleg hooch...and a dead actress named Virginia Rappe. The D.A. says it was Arbuckle who killed her—crushed her under his weight—and brings him up on manslaughter charges. William Randolph Hearst's newspapers stir up the public and demand a guilty verdict.

A Saturday of ballistic therapy at the Fawcettville gun range turns bloody for PI Niccolo ‘Fitz’ Fitzhugh when local social worker and community theater star Anna Maria Ippolito is found murdered in her home. It’s personal too—he’s been casually dating Anna Maria following his disastrous break up with prosecutor Alicia Linnerman. The discovery of a strange coded journal at Anna Maria’s home makes Fitz and Anna Maria’s sister Carlotta wonder if she’s living some sort of double life, one Carlotta wants to know about before the police get wind of it.

The Knight family is well-known in Spokane, thanks to the family patriarch, Solomon, founding a regional grocery chain. Each of Solomon's adult children seem to have gone their own way. Jocelyn is a cop. Nicky is a criminal. Susan and Harold are both striving to make it in the business, each in their own way. Marigold is an artist. And Lily, the youngest and frailest of them, is missing—sucked into the dark recesses of the drug world.

A young treasure diving couple is sadistically murdered in the back country of the Florida Keys - and Jesse McDermitt's friend is the prime suspect. The reclusive federal agent and former combat Marine launches his own investigation in the face of overwhelming evidence. McDermitt is certain of his friend's innocence. When a third victim's body is discovered lodged among the mangrove roots on Knockemdown Key, the race to stop a serial killer begins. Detective Devon Evans will do anything to apprehend the killer before he claims another victim.

On a balmy afternoon in May 2002, wealthy stockbroker Peter Nicholson was turkey hunting with three friends in Prentice Cooper State Forest when he tripped, fell on his shotgun, and accidentally shot himself … dead, but did he? Fifteen years later, as a last resort, Nicholson’s mother asks Harry Starke to find the truth. As we all know, Harry loves a cold case, but … as always, there’s a twist in the tale.

When a homemade explosive device detonates on the set of a network sitcom, FBI profiler Violet Darger heads to Hollywood to investigate. Her gut tells her this is only the first of what will be multiple attacks. Her gut is right. Darger enters the strange world of the studio lot. Elaborate sets surround her. Actors and crew members stream past in all directions. The excitement vibrates in the air—the passion necessary to capture the collective dreams of a culture within the lens of a camera.

After finding an incredibly lucrative Spanish treasure in the Keys of Florida, Black Sam Bellamy decided to leave the pirate life and return to his true love in New England. Before being shipwrecked on the way to retrieve her, he hid his booty with the Chbo So Clan in Port Essex.

Johnny Vallon exchanges the dangers of total war for the equally hazardous challenges of Chennault’s Investigations. And in the heart of London, murder hits home – right in Chennault’s office. Chennault, himself, owner of the flourishing detective agency, is found slumped over his desk. Heart trouble is the official diagnosis. But Vallon knows better, and proves it.